In Suchet's talented keeping, Melmotte is the consummate con man, and this deviously clever script by Andrew Davies (Othello, Wives & Daughters, Bridget Jones's Diary) gives him plenty of chances to do his stuff.

In BBC's beautifully set 1872 England, money makes the world go round. Frequently, it's other people's money. That is the case now, as Melmotte -- newly, but filthy, rich from what's whispered as ill-gotten gains -- crosses the threshold of his new family mansion. It's one of London's most prestigious addresses.

"We will see what we can do here," Melmotte mutters to his thoroughly cowed wife (Helen Schlesinger), and his unhappy daughter, Marie. Marie is a pint-sized firebrand of smoldering vengeance and passion -- a standout performance by Shirley Henderson (Bridget Jones's Diary).

Already, Melmotte's bankroll is the talk of London's posh gentlemen's clubs. Those gents are just panting to get a piece of whatever it is that has brought this common "foreigner" such monumental fortune. "His business is money. How can you afford not to know him?"

Melmotte's all-time biggest deal is about to walk in the door, bringing with it a fascinating cast of characters and another array of fine British actors. Young Paul Montague (Cillian Murphy) and his partner from America (Michael Riley) want to build a railroad. They've come all the way from Texas to see Melmotte, the man with the money to build it.

"Would anyone really want to take a train from Salt Lake City to Vera Cruz, Mexico? I wouldn't," Melmotte asks and answers his own question. He would, however, be more than happy to make a fortune on it.

"This is going to be the biggest thing seen on either side of the Atlantic in 50 years," he informs his ecstatic partners. "We'll be making history, and making money, too." Investors clamor to get in.

No one suspects that Melmotte's working partners and "English board of directors" of the South Pacific and Mexican Railway Co. are innocent pawns in a scheme to put millions in Melmotte's pocket, but not a farthing in the railroad.

Meanwhile, fluttering around like so many moths to flame, are all kinds of characters whose lives will be affected -- one way or another -- by Melmotte's greed and meanness.

Lady Carbury, played with butter-melting sweet-talk by Cheryl Campbell, writes books (Wicked Women of History is her latest) to pay her bills while she tends to a titled English mother's main duty: not just to get her children married off, but to get them married well.

Her son, Sir Felix, is the one you love to hate, as played by Matthew Macfayden. His mother's darling is rotten to the core and a weasel with women. Never mind -- Sir Felix gets his when Melmotte's daughter sets her cap for him. Marie does not take no for an answer.

Lady Carbury's daughter, Hetta (Paloma Baeza) could marry the adoring Roger (Douglas Hodge) today, but she doesn't love him. She loves Paul, the railroad builder. And he loves her back.

Unfortunately, Paul's already engaged to a steel magnolia from America (Miranda Otto), who doesn't take no for an answer, either. And this one totes a pistol that she's already used once, on the man who did her wrong in Oregon.

Under the deft direction of David Yates, those characters and more weave a colorful tapestry behind Melmotte's manipulation.

Before right triumphs -- that's expected in English literary classics -- the emperor of China dines at the piggie trough of Melmotte's table, and this scoundrel even runs for Parliament, with hopes of running that to suit himself, too.

As you'll see, in more than one way, The Way We Live Now could be a satire on the way we live now. But the most titillatingly close-to-home is the way Suchet, in a PBS interview, summed up author Trollope's mode of operation for Augustus Melmotte:

"He would take a brilliant idea, form a company, sell stock, and use that money to set up another company, (then) sell shares in that company and get more money. He might have five or six companies going all at the same time. He wouldn't bother with running them. He'd just take all that money, for as long as he could keep it coming in, and have a wonderful life."